Panel Discussions

The IT profession has evolved from generalists, where an individual performed all roles within the software life cycle, to distinct disciplines that bring specialized knowledge and competencies to a project team. IT organizational structures have aligned these specialized disciplines into centers of excellence, communities of practice, and other pools of same-skilled resources. Institutes and professional organizations have defined bodies of knowledge for these disciplines and offer certification credentials. Global networks of local chapters exist to support the continued educational needs of individuals within various disciplines.

How has this movement towards specialists impacted project teams and career opportunities within the IT profession? And how is Agile now redefining roles to improve collaboration? Representatives from project management, business analysis, software development, QA/testing, and process engineering disciplines will provide insights into their bodies of knowledge and explore similarities, differences, and ways to foster collaboration, communication, and career paths across these disciplines.

With today’s pressures to reduce time to market and costs, testing tools are a means to improve productivity. An alternative to commercial testing tools is open source software, developed by voluntary efforts of communities of individual programmers and large companies, and is openly published for use at no charge.

With the growth of open source software over the past decade, open source covers the entire testing lifecycle — test management, functional automation, acceptance testing, continuous integration, defect management, and performance testing. Tools such as Selenium, Cucumber, FitNesse, Hudson, Bugzilla. TestLink, Load UI are available along with over a hundred open source functionality testing tools and over fifty performance testing tools. Come hear the distinguished panel of thought leaders share their perspectives on open source software as they address questions such as:

What are the advantages, myths and shortcomings of open source?

Have open source tools commoditized the testing tool marketplace?

How has the growth Agile impacted open source?

How does open source support mobile apps testing?

How is open source contributing to industry standards?

Can open source and commercial testing tools effectively be used together?